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ECS On a Musical Tour

When I left it last time, we still weren’t completely sure if our tour was going to be able to go ahead…but fortunately all the paperwork was completed in time, and so off we set the following morning. Things didn’t start off too well, with horrendous traffic causing us to miss our ferry from Dover to Calais, but a couple of hours later we finally made it to France. Continue reading →

Term has well and truly ended…

Our term has well and truly ended, exam results have been published and everyone’s getting ready to go on holiday,...it starts to rain. Good old predictable English weather. But not to worry. I was extremely pleased with my results, receiving a first with room to spare – it’s a shame these marks don’t count towards the final degree! As for holidays, well, tomorrow I’m going on tour with SUJO, playing in jazz festivals across France and Spain for the next 8 days. Continue reading →

#4 Results and Houses

#4 - Results and Houses I got my results just over a week ago. I got a 2:ii. I expected as much, though. Let down by Formal Methods, yet I did insanely well in Software Engineering somehow. In much more interesting news, I have now moved into my new house and all I can say is that this is awesome. I love this house. It’s brilliant. I still haven’t entirely unpacked, but I am most of the way there now. Continue reading →

#3 – End of year 1

#3 - End of year 1 So my first year is officially over. I’ve finished all my exams, and now I have nothing academic to do until September or October. It’s a weird feeling, having nothing to do, though I’ve not really got nothing to do. I have to look for a job, I have to pack my life into boxes to move into my new house, and I have to sort out transferring bills and everything into my name for when that happens. But for now, I can just reminisce about my first year. I loved it. Continue reading →

Moving house

Feeling slightly elated after receiving my results a couple of days ago. Only 40% is required to pass and the grades from this year have no value in the overall degree. Hence, it would have been easy to adopt the attitude that this will be easy therefore only the effort required to do this should be made. To use the vernacular: that would have been something of an epic fail. (Yes, I had to look up 'vernacular' in the dictionary as well. Continue reading →

UMAP 2009 Day 1

I'm in Trento, Italy for the second conference of my academic career: UMAP (User Modelling And Personalisation) 2009. The first was back in November at DIGITEL 2008, in Banff, Canada, but someone convinced me not to take my laptop and typing a blog entry on my phone was too much hard work!! Conferences are an important part of the research world, as they are where academics present their work to their peers and receive feedback. Continue reading →

Performance and concurrency

Performance and concurrency A technical post today, methinks. After having been assigned to my project supervisor for next year, it seems the thing we are most compatible on is exploring concurrency patterns in software. To that end, I have been researching some of the issues surrounding concurrency by analysing the design of some of my code at work. I am not at liberty to post real source code, so I have given the architectural overview below. Continue reading →

One Year Down….

Well, that's it! It's the end of my first year at Southampton University and boy has time flown by. I can't believe that this time last year I was still revising hard for the last of my A-level exams and yet now Part I is all over. My final exam was last Tuesday and overall I was very pleased with how they went. Continue reading →

Group Revision

At last, the end is in sight. Three exams have been beaten back, leaving just maths skulking in the corner, hissing menacingly. Come Tuesday, one of us will be a gibbering wreck. For now, I've got two more days to sharpen my lance and work out what in the name of engineering is up with the Laurant expansion. Maybe I should get the dream-team to explain it to me. On my course, we decided a while back that exams were a beast best conquered as a group. Continue reading →

Empowering Communication Tools

As you can no doubt imagine, it's been a little hectic since the end of the Easter break. The steady flow of coursework deadlines, in-class tests and lab marking sessions has kept everybody on their toes. Whilst we were in the Stress-Agony-Panic-Relief cycle of multiple coursework deadlines, we are now in the Stress-Agony-Panic-Relief cycle of exams. This is worse than being a footie fan. Continue reading →